EU food security drivers and resilience interventions: insights from a multi-actor assessment

This study provides an exploratory validation of key drivers and resilience interventions affecting food security in the European Union (EU) across six pillars: availability, access, utilization, stability, agency, and sustainability. It focuses on prioritizing these pillars, identifying key hazards, and assessing 29 specific interventions to improve food system resilience and sustainability. A mixed-methods approach combined a structured literature and policy review with an exploratory survey of EU food system stakeholders (n = 53), adopting a multi-actor perspective that captures diverse roles across the food supply chain. The survey served as an initial validation exercise, capturing indicative stakeholder perspectives, including rankings of food security pillars, hazard assessments, and Likert-scale evaluations of resilience interventions. The review identified drivers of food security, resilience factors, and targeted interventions. The survey gathered stakeholder views through questionnaires that included ranking and Likert-scale questions. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and inferential analyses, including ANOVA and Tukey’s HSD post hoc tests, to explore differences across stakeholder categories. This combination of evidence synthesis and stakeholder input provided contextual insights and an exploratory validation of the proposed framework. Stakeholders rated availability (5.2 ± 1.1) and access (4.9 ± 1.0) as the most important food security pillars, while sustainability was seen as a significant long-term issue. Major hazards included climate change (78%), market volatility (65%), and supply chain inefficiencies (61%). Climate mitigation policies, crisis response mechanisms, and research and innovation were the highest-rated interventions. Despite widespread acknowledgment of these risks, only a small number of organizations reported having structured resilience practices in place, showing gaps in preparedness. The findings highlight indicative priorities among surveyed stakeholders, emphasizing the perceived importance of coordinated governance, investment in innovation, and strengthened crisis-preparedness frameworks.